Personalized Cards and Gifts – Guest Post by Steve Russell

‘Tis the season in my part of the world, weather wise, to do less shooting and more with the images I’ve already shot this year. It’s become a tradition for me to create a holiday e-card that I can send out to friends and family (and now, to everyone who reads this blog). Despite all the help I got with Photoshop from Tim Cooper in Summer Intensive, I am the world’s worst at it but somehow manage to create a few layers (in this case, the damselfly background, hats and text) and a colored canvas border and voilà! – a personalized holiday e-card that I could also print.

Lightroom is easier for me to use so I refined the image there trying to match the second hat with the more subdued, less exposed and blurred depth of field of the second damselfly. I should mention that it usually helps to find a subject that appears to be looking right at the viewer. I’ll be sending my card to a number of Spanish speakers, so hence, the Spanish wording and grammar.

I also made, but have not yet received, custom decks of playing cards with a different bird image for each deck I ordered (www.artscow.com). Last year it was 2000-piece puzzles out of my favorite images (www.puzzleyou.com) and the year before it was mugs with dragonfly images embedded on them (www.robis.com). Fun stuff that warms me inside especially when it is so drab and rainy outside.